BENTHIC COMMUNITIES ON RESTORED CORAL REEFS CONFER EQUIVALENT AESTHETIC VALUE TO HEALTHY REEFS.

Alisa, C.A.G., Razak, T.B., Mouquet N.*,Graham A.J, HemingsonC. R. ,Mouillot D., Damayanti, L. Prasetya M. E. , Maulana P. B., Hamka A. , Dwiyanto A., Abeng A. T., Madjid, Irwan, R. E., Hidayat A., Lakota H., Parrangan C. V., Pratama A. M. A., Hamzah, Suandar, Subhan B., Zamani N. P., Vida R. T. & Lamont, T. A. C. (2025).

Scientific Reports 15, 20790. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06373-3

Key message : Coral restoration has become a common response to reef degradation, but restoration success is usually evaluated based on coral cover increases rather than ecosystem service recovery. Here, we quantify the aesthetic value of restored reefs at one of the world’s largest coral restoration projects, compared to nearby healthy and degraded reefs. Using deep learning models trained on people’s visual preferences, we estimated the aesthetic value of coral reef benthic photographs with high prediction accuracy (R2 = 0.95). Restored reefs exhibited aesthetic value that was statistically equivalent to healthy reefs and significantly higher than degraded reefs. High aesthetic value was primarily driven by colour diversity and live coral cover, which were both higher in healthy and restored reefs than degraded reefs. Taken together, these results demonstrate the recovery of aesthetic value towards a healthy state after large-scale restoration, indicating that coral restoration can support vital tourism services and well-being contributions to people.

Aesthetic rating of benthic habitat. (a) Examples of photographs with varying predicted aesthetic ratings. The top row are the photographs with the three highest predicted aesthetic ratings; the second row are photographs with intermediate predicted aesthetic ratings; and the third row are the photographs with the three lowest predicted aesthetic ratings. In each photograph, the aesthetic rating is given in the corner, with the background colour indicating whether the photograph is from a healthy (dark blue), restored (light blue), or degraded (grey) habitat. (b) Predicted aesthetic ratings of photographs from healthy, restored, and degraded reefs. A linear mixed model revealed a significant effect of habitat type on aesthetic rating (p< 0.001).

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OTHER TOPICS: Aesthetics of Biodiversity, Biogeography, Macroecology & Ecophylogenetics, Experimental Evolution, Functional Biogeography, Functional Rarity, Nature for Future, Metacommunities, Metaecosystems, Reviews and Synthesis, Trophic Biogeography & Metaweb